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Meow! Do Cats Cause Schizophrenia? #TossbackTuesday

Meow! Do Cats Cause Schizophrenia?

Chalk one up to dog lovers! Did you know that domesticated cats carry viruses linked to mental illness? Scientist and psychiatrists have been studying the connection between the two and have found “exciting” results. Around the year 1808, schizophrenia went from being an obscure disease to something as common as the flu. During that same time frame, cat ownership rose in population across America. According to the “experts” this is no accident.

For some time now, E. Fuller Torrey has been studying the connection between cats, parasites, and mental illness. Torrey says cats have been implicated in several illnesses besides schizophrenia, including deafness, seizures, cerebral palsy, and Tourrets syndrome, due to the toxoplasmosis cats transmit. The question is, how are house cats a quiet killer when they are so fun to watch on the internet?

Sally Hester, admitted dog lover, attended the conference where this “exciting” news in health was presented. “This makes perfect sense to me now,” she said. “My aunt has eleven cats. So it’s not that she’s crazy because she has eleven cats, it’s that she has eleven cats that she is crazy. What a breakthrough.”

The peak age to show signs of infection from taxoplasmicity is the same age range for signs of schizophrenia, which is 18. Coincidence? Not so. Researchers say these feline infections can strike unborn babies as well as children and teens. But the conference wasn’t all doom and gloom. There were helpful tips on how to combat this virus.

“For starters, get rid of all sandboxes. How do you think we managed to get so many feline samples?” explained one of the scientists. “The only downside was almost every rodent out there used the sandbox as it’s personal litter box, so it took a while to segregate the feline samples.”

There are some skeptics out there about this “theory” and many experts have expressed “disbelief” at the findings of this study, citing Panda bears as the perfect example. Pandas are known for having sore throats, however there is no connection between strep throat and kids contracting a soar throat as a result of playing with the pandas. Of course, there are not studies of pandas playing with kids to draw numerical results.

A member of the landscaping crew at the lab, Juan dos Cerveza, has his own thoughts on this very “exciting” news about cats and mental health. “Do you know how many chemicals I spray on the grass and shrubs, man? Cat piss is the least of my problems.”